Biography Osborne’s grandfather, Sir Edward Osborne†, came from a minor gentry family from Kent but was apprenticed to a leading London merchant. Having married his master’s daughter, he accumulated a substantial mercantile fortune and was elected to Parliament for the City in 1586. His wife brought him substantial properties, principally in London, Essex and Yorkshire, but they also included the manor of Bilby in Nottinghamshire, four-and-half miles north-west of East Retford. His son, Sir Hewett Osborne, retained at least some of his business interests in London, investing in trade with the Ottoman Empire. He served with distinction as a soldier under Peregrine Bertie, 13th Lord Willoughby of Willoughby, Beck and Eresby, in France and Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, in Ireland, where he died on active service.15

As his father died when he was still a minor, Osborne became a ward of the Crown. His mother and her brother, (Sir) George Fleetwood, purchased his wardship in June 1600 for £420.16 In 1604 she married Sir Peter Frescheville* of Staveley in Derbyshire, in whose household Osborne presumably spent the latter part of his childhood.17 When Osborne came of age in 1617 he sold his Essex property to William Fanshawe* for £1,150, and enlarged his estate in Yorkshire. In July 1620 he acquired a baronetcy without paying cash into the Exchequer, and later that year signed the Yorkshire election indenture, although he continued to live mostly in Essex, at Stratford Langthorne, which he leased from Henry Meautys*. Here he was able to offer hospitality during parliamentary sessions to his brother-in-law Christopher Wandesford*. He took up residence at Kiveton, in the West Riding, in 1625, following the death of his first wife, and supported his friend and neighbour Sir Thomas Wentworth* in the Yorkshire election of that year.18 Pricked as sheriff of Nottinghamshire in the autumn of 1625, he never served, for having been granted a pass in July he was then travelling abroad.19 He appears to have returned to England by January 1626, when he was again a party to the Yorkshire election return.20 Listed as a Forced Loan defaulter in April 1627, the West Riding commissioners certified that ‘he is not in the country, for that our letters could not be delivered to him’, but he paid his assessment of £25 in July.21

Osborne was probably nominated for East Retford in 1628 by Sir Gervase Clifton*, the high steward of the borough, to whom Osborne sold his property at Bilby at some unspecified date. Osborne was connected with Clifton via his stepfather, Sir Peter Frescheville, whose father’s first wife had been Clifton’s aunt. Frescheville appointed Osborne and Clifton supervisors of his will in 1633, describing the latter as his ‘kind friend and ally’.22 Clifton made no recorded speeches and was named to no committees in the third Caroline Parliament. However, he claimed privilege on 25 June 1628 for two of his servants who had been arrested, and again for himself concerning a suit in the Court of Requests on 27 Jan. 1629.23

Osborne was one of Wentworth’s closest supporters, deputizing for him in the Council in the North when Wentworth was appointed Ireland’s lord deputy, in which capacity (Sir) John Coke* found Osborne ‘a young man of good understanding, and counsellable, and very forward to promote His Majesty’s service’.24 Elected for York to the Short Parliament, he was also returned to the Long Parliament, but his return for Berwick was declared void. A royalist during the Civil War, he was obliged to pay a fine of £1,649 to recover his estate, which was sequestered by the parliamentarians, at which time his gross annual income was assessed at £978. He died at Kiveton in September 1647, according to his niece as a result of eating too many cold melons, and was buried at Harthill under a memorial extolling his probity and prudence during his eight years’ service as vice-president of the Council in the North. His niece Alice Thornton, the daughter of Christopher Wandesford, remembered him as ‘a very good wise, and prudent man’ and ‘orthodox to the Church of England, a faithful loyal subject to the king, and of a sweet and affable disposition to all’. Having died intestate administration was granted to his widow on 16 Nov. 1657. His personal goods were valued in his probate inventory at £2,019 2s. 5d. His son Thomas, best known by his title as earl of Danby, became one of the leading figures in both Houses after the Restoration.25